ABSTRACT
Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank, said on US National Public Radio in December, 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions must level off before 2020. This chapter explains global warming as an international relations problem, as an aspect of conflict between the poorer countries and the richer countries, that is, between the countries of the Global South and those of the North. In international negotiations surrounding the global warming crisis, many countries of the Global South are demanding that the Global North countries change their lifestyles. It argues that due to racism many people in richer countries are unwilling to make concessions to people of color in the Global South. The chapter use Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus as theoretical framework to explain why racism, as well as its intersection with social class and sex/gender, might lead some people to act or not act on the global warming crisis, without necessarily causing them to behave in given way.
